How First Impressions Hurt (or Help) Your Business Reviews

A negative review from a satisfied customer, one who told you they were satisfied? It’s a frustrating experience. Sometimes their review isn’t negative, it’s just meh.

There’s a hidden trigger to negative reviews.

This trigger, if mismanaged, dramatically increases your odds of receiving a negative review. Do everything right, treat your customers well and you may still receive a negative review.

The trigger I’m referring to is first impressions.

First impressions hurt (or help) your business

Make a good first impression and you’re able to attract a significant amount of goodwill from customers, even when you make a mistake. Make a poor first impression and every good thing you do is discounted and denied.

Incredibly unfair isn’t it?

But why does this happen? Why are first impressions so important to us? First impressions are important because we use them to categorize and classify those around us.

· The dominance hierarchy. Customers in particular, people in general, are all sensitive to our place in the pecking order. We subconsciously understand a simple truth. The people, brands and organizations we associate with reflect on us. We use a diverse set of signals to establish status. It can be as complex as social class and as simple and innocent as laughter or the sound of your voice.

· Image and presentation.Every customer comes to you with expectations. They expect a business in your specific category to look, sound, behave and present in a very specific way. Deviate from those expectations, fail to present your business properly and you increase the odds of making a poor first impression.

· Your social competence. Every customer makes an appraisal of your social, emotional, cognitive and behavioral skills. Do you have socially competent employees who treat customers with respect and compassion? Do you show you have good conversation skills or do you dominate the discussion and focus on yourself?

Customers categorize your business based on the data collected by their conscious and subconscious mind. This data forms the basis for their first impressions.

Here’s why first impressions matter.

1. First impressions are near-instant

Research shows we form first impressions almost instantly, creating a detailed picture or concept of people, organizations and our environment in mere milliseconds.

· If a first impression is negative, the brain activates the communication protocol used for memory formation – your brain stores your negative first impression.

· If your first impression is positive, your brain uses a different communication protocol – one that’s optimized for learning. This creates excitement initially and is used to cement the connection, encouraging the growth of the relationship.

What this means for your reviews:

Jon Basso, owner of the Heart Attack Grill, says his food will literally kill you, and he’s proud of it. He proudly displayed his dead customer’s ashes on national TV after they died from eating his food.

Making a stand on any issue will attract some customers and repel others. Standing for this excludes that. If you’re running an agency that’s all about ethical marketing practices, you’ll repel grey hat customers who want you to “push the envelope.”

3. First impressions are permanent-ish

Professor Vivian Zayas, psychologist at Cornell University, wanted an answer to the question – are first impressions permanent?

So she ran an experiment.

Zayas and her colleagues, Gul Gunaydin and Emre Selcuk had participants look at several photos of people. They asked them about their first impressions based on those pictures.

They waited a month.

Then they invited participants back to the laboratory to interact with people. What these participants didn’t realize is that they were engaging with the very same people they had seen in photos a month earlier.

This can be dangerous if it causes us to extrapolate or generalize our first impressions. A customer who has a bad experience with a used car salesman may make a permanent assessment of their character.

From a customer’s standpoint, their first impression is your fault, (even when it isn’t).

What this means for your reviews:

Comcast has had a long history of poor customer service, and horrible reviews.

As we’ve seen, first impressions are incredibly difficult to shake. Make the wrong moves, become known for the wrong things and that perception just may become permanent. A devastating outcome if you’re looking for positive customer reviews.

What if you don’t know about the first impressions customers have of you? That’s an easy to fix problem.

Just ask your customers.

Anonymously of course. We’ve all been conditioned to be nice to each other. That’s a good thing except when you want customers to be honest with you. Asking them about their experiences from time to time (besides the post-sale request for reviews) enables you to keep track of customer sentiment.

2. Overcompensate. Chipotle has been hammered by food safety scandals. Tainted food, major outbreaks, E. Coli and Norovirus. So they’ve gone above and beyond. They’ve overcompensated. They’ve closed stores, completely overhauled their storage and food prep procedures. Apologized to customers. They’ve done their best to show that things are different now. And it’s working. The lesson? Overcompensate to overcome a negative first impression.

3. Build a close(r) relationship. Zappos is known for their amazing customer service. Customers arrive with that perception. So what does Zappos do? They continue to be excellent. They show customers they care and continue to reinforce the positive first impression customers have of them. The rest, as they say, is history.

4. Continue to be excellent. If your customer’s first impression of you is based on a past negative experience there’s not a whole lot you can do. Challenge their opinion and you make their negative impression stronger. Try to convince them and you prove their point. Your only option with a customer who’s projecting is simply this: Continue to be excellent. They’ll come around in time.

First impressions are hard, but not impossible to change. You can change a negative first impression, if you’re willing to invest the time and effort.

Want the easier route?

Build a positive first impression from the beginning, then, work to maintain it. Protect your reputation and your perception in customers eyes.

Amazing five star reviews follow naturally.

First impressions help or hurt your business

Make a good first impression and you’re able to attract a significant amount of goodwill from customers. This insulates your business from negative reviews, even when you make a mistake. Make a poor first impression and you face an uphill battle.

Customers are fair…

If they know you genuinely care about them. Show them through your actions that you care, continue to be excellent and first impressions won’t matter as much.

With some upfront planning and conscientious effort, customers will see you for what you are.